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Hillary's Economic Snake Oil
She must think the voters are retarded. This morning on the way to work I heard an NPR story about the candidates proposals for helping the situation with gas prices. Hillary's idea (stolen from McCain because she does not want to diferentiate herself from the GOP) is for a gas tax holiday for the summer. An idea that I thoght was stupid before I heard how she proposes to pay for it. She is proposing that it be paid for by imposing a tax on Oil comapany profits. How dumb is that. That would just change the point in the production cycle where the tax is levied without helping prices at the pump at all. Are the voters realy dumb enough to buy this BS?
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Comments (14)
She's either oblivious or (more probably) being deliberately obtuse relative to the fact that any corporation is at least in part a way of passing along taxes to its customers.
April 30, 2008 8:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
THEY ARE WORSE THAN RETARDED !
They are so stupid they forgot that I promised not to disown Wright OR the AA community. Gues who's next!
Barry "The Loyal" Hussien Obama
April 30, 2008 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sadly, yes a majority of the voters in American are none to bright.
If they were would Bush II be in office today?
April 30, 2008 9:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
You don't understand, Larry. Those taxes are going to eat into the companies' profits. Are you really so cynical to think that the companies would continue to rake in the same profits and pass the increased taxes on to consumers?!?
Shame on you, Larry. Shame on you.
April 30, 2008 9:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
How foolish of me. Of course Hillary is right and taxes will not be passed on to the consumer.
April 30, 2008 10:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
(I am a staunch Hillary supporter)-- This tax proposal is totally pointless. gasoline is a largely inelastic good. This means that if taxes are reduced by $0.18 then the price will simply increase by that much. At least Hillary does pay for the tax by levying a profit tax on the producers, but it is pointless. All the more so since it has NO chance of passing at this late stage of the congressional session. However, it is a symbolic gesture. I am not terribly troubled by it as an HRC supporter. To me the most important issues still revolve around health care and her general stance around social security--which I don't think should be viewed the way Obama is depicting it, as if it's in a crisis. That is straight out of the Republican playbook that seeks to dismantle SS and Medicare.
April 30, 2008 10:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
I can respect that point-of-view. I don't agree with everything Obama does either, but I still think he's the best candidate, and I can understand that you feel the same about Clinton.
April 30, 2008 11:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
As a staunch Hillary supporter what will it take for you to believe that she has lost this election?
April 30, 2008 12:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
This will end up costing at least $10 billion.
I think that's the cost of a barrel of snake oil.
Friedman's take:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/opinion/30friedman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
April 30, 2008 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, I would like to question her commitment to the environment and climate change by supporting this stupid gas tax holiday.
April 30, 2008 11:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, that was my first question, as well. At best, this is a sham that will have no impact. At worst, it's damaging to the environment.
April 30, 2008 11:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why would I think she's lost the election?
She is behind, but neither will likely achieve the pledged delegates necessary. Obama is imploding. His break from wright yesterday begs the question "what did wright say this past weekend that was different/worse than what he's been saying for years?"
Hillary is the candidate that reflects my views about health care and social security among other policy issues--I think she's best for the job. I think she is a much stronger candidate against McCain, she wins the key states according to reasonable analysis.
April 30, 2008 12:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Her effectiveness against McCain or any other aspect of her cadidacy is irrelevent to the question of wether she is in a position to win the nomination. She could be the greatest candidate in the world getting beat by the Barny Fife of politics and she would still be getting beat. She is losing the pledged delegate count by an insurmountable amount by the rules of the Democratic primary system.
There is no way on gods green earth that the superdelegates are going to overturn the decision of the pledged delegates. Can you see a scenario under the rules in place that gives her the lead in pledged delegates?
April 30, 2008 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why did Obama support a gas-tax holidy 3 times when he was in the state legistlature and gas prices were rising? (I'm just asking, since I don't know the answer). It just seems a bit unfair to single out Hillary for this when Obama has supported the same policy in the past...
April 30, 2008 6:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
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